Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

I was there ... despite I was asleep

Yesterday night (2012. Sept 8-9 night), the coalition I'm in captured the capital system of one of the biggest enemy alliances. AZN-2D of Red Overlord was dropped sov by spies and a Navy Apocalypse fleet held it while Territorial Claim Units came online. The system was captured by Pandemic Legion, we can access it, our enemies can't. These events made the Red Overlord break up and part of them forming a new alliance "Unclaimed" that joined us, HoneyBadger Coalition.

While this happened I was asleep. I've seen the fleet calls but couldn't participate even if it wouldn't be late night in my timezone as I can't fly anything that fits into a Navy Apocalypse fleet. Still I write about this event as "we captured it". What did I do to help this happen? My biggest contribution is 20billion ISK (about $700 in the item shop) donation every month to TEST alliance, the biggest member of HBC. This money is 6% of the income of the alliance. It is enough to buy 30 Navy Apocalypse battleships. Also I participated earlier fleets against Red Overlord, contributing to their weakening. I am busy AFK cloaker in the space of the enemy coalition, preventing their bots and cowardly members from farming money.

"OK, you don't slack overall. But you still weren't there." I don't blame you if you think that way. EVE Online is a very unique game, unlike any other MMO. "Modern" MMO world are merely a lobby for various minigames. The only thing carries trough between minigames is your character, however this character progression is trivialized. Everyone has more or less the same item level. In EVE Online the world is changing by your actions and your own character strength varies a lot. There isn't an NPC that hands out battleships for some trivial task. You have to get 2-300M ISK for the empty hull and 50-100M more for fittings. Getting this money is about 8 hours farming for an average player.

Unlike in any other MMOs, your past has an effect on your present and future. You can't just catch up with everyone in a week of extensive playing. Therefore every past actions that lead us here contributed. AZN-2D couldn't be taken if we wouldn't have ships to take it or if the enemy wouldn't be demoralized and unable to defend it. I took part in rising both the army and hitting ROL.

EVE Online is unique in one more way: in every other MMOs, doing the endgame provides the best rewards. If you do heroic raiding in WoW, you get the highest available ilvl. No other actions can give you so high ilvl. In EVE capturing the star systems, painting the map to your colors isn't really rewarding. The act of PvP gives nearly nothing. No loot roll jumps up when an enemy blows, and no honor points handed out. Sure, you can utilize the captured space, but the best way to get very rich is to ignore the whole thing, stay in the starter regions (highsec), semi-AFK-farm day and night or trade/industry for higher ISK/hour. The fruits of nullsec are rather a compensation than a goal. Capturing star systems demands you to donate your time/items instead of rewarding you with ingame items. You capture them because they are there and not because they give you something.

Because of this, many player choose to opt out of the system ownership warfare. Many systems are held by outright morons simply because no one else wanted it. It's not an obvious choice for competitive players like raiding in WoW.

Here is where industrialists become interesting. The reason while I alone can provide 6% of TEST income (average guy provides 100%/10000 = 0.01%) is that the income is small. Recognizing both that capturing star systems is a goal on its own, needing effort and that most people prefer to make effort by participating in fleets I choose to participate via providing ISK and motivate other industrialists to do so. Without such contributions the expansion cannot be upheld and the galaxy cannot be captured. Obviously I'm not the only one contributing via industry. Most of the income is from moon mining and mining towers must be managed. It's done by volunteer logistics team. Despite our name don't show up in the killboards, without us there wouldn't be fleet at all.

The very purpose of my rather large donation is to show how important industry is in EVE and motivate people to openly be moneymakers instead of doing it on an alt while spitting "we r l33t PvPrs fuck carebears" on his main.

Speaking of this donation, I made the first just a month ago, here is the next:

For EVE trade and industrial discussions join Goblinworks channel.
If you want to get into nullsec, go to the official forum recruitment thread and type the name of the alliance you seek into the search and start reading. I'm in TEST by the way.
Wednesday morning report: 159.9B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 4.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)

Can you explain why you agree that capturing star systems is a valid goal on it's own (re: this post), but not raiding in wow? Both have no lasting rewards (colours keep changing, gear becomes obsolete), excluding possibly some epeen (being able to colour a lot/being high on progress)

I've got one simple, one provocative and one concluding question for you. I'm pretty sure you won't either answer nor public my comment, but here you go:

First the simple question?Do you think that respect, is something that people have to achieve through hard work?

You're providing 6% of TESTs (official) income. By the same logic, that you use to say "I'm contributing" you could also state, that you're worth less than the Promethium Moons (7%).

This leads to my second and therefore provocative question:

Do you think, that giving TEST money, earns you any kind of respect?

You could argue, that the logistics of running all these moons are a lot of work, and everyone would agree with you.So if we compare you, to mining all these moons, you're a lot less work. Because they only have to NOT laugh about you (openly) to keep the money flowing.

Therefore coming to my concluding question:Why do you think, that giving TEST free money, is linked in anyway to any kind of appreciation of Industry players, when they don't have to do anything in return?

It's not exactly TEST players who shall recognize this. It's alliance leaders. Those who look at the chart and say "if those nerds wouldn't update those moons and that nutcase wouldn't give us money we would be out of business". Also while random -A- member just say "lol fagotts we r l33t", the -A- leader who can't undock because there are 2x more TEST outside because of reimbursement knows that this has nothing to do with morale or skills, just ISK.

Does TEST manufacture its own ships and fittings, or buy from market, and which markets, hisec or nullsec?

If a TEST member brings a ship, where did they probably get it? Bought in a hisec hub and flown by the individual out to nullsec? Or bought in a hisec hub and freighted out to nullsec? If a pilot gets their ship reimbursed, is it a cash transfer, or is it "so and so is the person to talk to about a reimbursement ship"?

The leaders of alliances that reimburse have some valuable market info: their intentions. They could plan a roam or whatever at a specific time, estimate probable losses, and notify the logistics people to manufacture or otherwise acquire the ships and fittings. There might well be efficiency advantages to concentrating the purchasing to only a few logistics experts so that the logistics experts could spread the purchasing out over a broader period of time, freight in batches, and so on.

That sort of pvp/industrialist relationship might be more likely create the nullsec hubs that you (and I) would like to see than simply transferring cash from hisec to alliance purses.